Tech vs. Media: Which TV Streaming Strategy Is Better?
The merits of ‘bingeable’ and weekly release schedules for TV shows
Last weekend at Disney’s D23 Expo, the company confirmed that its forthcoming Disney Plus streaming service will release episodes of original series on a weekly schedule, “ditching” the binge-watching model of Netflix, as some put it.
Rich Greenfield, a veteran media analyst, noted that the release strategy of current and forthcoming streaming platforms seems to be split squarely across “tech platforms” following bingeable schedules and “legacy media” companies releasing episodes of their original content on a week-to-week basis, as they traditionally had.
Greenfield and others on Twitter positioned this divergence of strategies as “consumer first vs. business model first.” They posited that releasing every episode of a TV season at the same time, allowing viewers to watch them on their own schedule, is a better consumer experience, while a weekly release schedule, which requires viewers to sustain their subscriptions to watch…
